Thursday, June 28, 2012

City missed a lot of cell antennae

The City Department of Finance didn't collect an estimated $24 million in cell phone antenna-related taxes because it didn't ID all the people collecting cash from antennas, Comptroller John Liu announced today.

Yes, you read that correctly: because the Department of Finance didn't look at Department of Buildings data indicating structures with antennas -- which, under law, must be taxed -- Finance overlooked 2000 taxable property owners.

Under City law, people who own commercial property or big apartment buildings have to tell the DOF whether they're making money from antennas. That's because any such profits make these properties more valuable, affecting how much they should be taxed.

The audit, which was a collaboration between Liu and State Comptroller Thomas P. Di Napoli, claims that at least 2,108 properties failed to claim income from 2008 to 2009.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I'm surprised that such payments to stick antennas on roofs don't work like the bills I pay for cellphone service. The amount destined for taxes is collected by the cellphone carrier for the government so it doesn't even get to the landlord.

BTW prior to 2010 , the Commissioner of D.O.F. was Martha Stark. while a 111 page report of a D.O.I. probe was disclosed , she resigned in 2009 after many years as head of this agency.ny post archives detail her DUAL work as director of a Realty Investors Corp. ?

one wonders how many of these properties had antennas that NO TAXES were collected by D.O.F. ?

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